


there was no role written for me (and i cannot play the lead)

by alynshir



Category: Kingdoms of Amalur
Genre: F/F, Gen, Spoilers, battle of mel senshir
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-27
Updated: 2020-02-27
Packaged: 2021-02-28 05:02:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,403
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22918153
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alynshir/pseuds/alynshir
Summary: (written likely in 2015~, edited for here and now)the battle of mel senshir rages, and the fateless one for all her power, can do nothing.
Relationships: Fateless One/Alyn Shir
Kudos: 10





	there was no role written for me (and i cannot play the lead)

Your blades have been slicing the air and the enemy into pieces for what feels like it’s been forever, and you can barely catch your breath as you push yourself forwards on burning muscles. Pounding, pounding, your heart in your head and your head in your eyes and ears. Your hair is sliding loose of its braids and dangling, sweaty strands in your eyes with no time to shove them back.

This is Mel Senshir, and you realise as you look over the sea of people fighting, fearing, fleeing, falling, that you have never seen battle before today.

Slash, strike, shuffle your feet along the echoing, bloodstained stones, pivot, duck - “Die, dustling!” You barely even hear the words anymore as your blades meet skin and bone and flesh and red, because you are their antithesis and in these moments, they are the true dustling. Run, now, run before more find you - the Great General awaits; the hero, the savior. She needs you, and you need to help her. Slash, duck, clashing, clanging, whorls of silver and green metal as you spin through the air. No time for this; the soldiers will fight these foot-fae, you must cast for bigger fish in this river. Your blood sings a song in harmony with the hearts of the soldiers around you, and you feel alive and real and it is almost as if you wish the siege would never end.

You see her. Her - not the general her or the General her, but your her, at least who you would like to be your her. She moves seamlessly like a night wind, black hair fluttering, flying, beautiful, and she strikes like a serpent or a scavenger, desperate, venomous, beautiful, and you nearly stop short in your tracks because when she turns and looks at you with battleborn hair and battlebored eyes, you think you have never seen such a beautiful thing in your life. You ask her to join you, she refuses. Your heartbeat quickens because leaving her to the unknown seems the worse of both plans, but she waves you on, ‘you have a habit of choosing strange times for conversation’, move, move, move, you have to move now - so you move past, move on, run, run.

Choking, gasping, the city’s rampart air is rampant with smoke and blood and prismere dust that makes you want to claw out your own jugular and bleed out as it stings your skin. You see the Sun Spear in the distance, shining, shimmering, the sunbeam that has pierced the everlong night of this siege; it is solstice and summer and victory captured in a weapon, a weapon - in the hand of one who is being hurt, the hero is being hurt! You scream, shout, anything, as you leap for the man, the fae, Malwyn - he looks up, distracted, and your lips pull up in a bared tooth, bared teeth grin, because that is what you needed.

Duck, bob, weave, slice, hack, slash, and then bowstring cutting into your fingers as you put all of your power and pain into the few arrows you have left. They sink into his flesh as the teeth of fleas do; he fights on, on, on, on with the Cycle.

And then - and then! Ground-shaking, blood-thirsting Balor, towering above you like the moon does the sea, Balor with his wicked eye, it burns, it burns, it burns you, scorches skin, you must escape, you must - you must run! You cannot fight this, it is too much, you will die, you will die, and you have been alive for such a short time that it feels like a waste. You must run, it burns, it burns, his light is like the sun, but wrong, but unyielding and cruel -

The hero cries out as the witch lands a blow with his battering blades, with his smoking sceptre, with something or other, she cries out and shouts for you to help, help, she needs your help.

The witch-king falls by your hand, and for a silly moment you think perhaps the battle has been won and the monster before you will fall. It is a stupid thought that crashes out of your head as the Balor crashes away and the battered general dashes after it, you charge after in the hopes that the beast will be slain before you catch up. You have never been much of a runner.

A man dies, cut down by the Balor’s cruel sun, and your stomach knots and roils and twists like a tempest because he only crossed paths with the beam when you told him to follow you. He would have been safe. Your fault, your fault, your fault, the beats of your faults match the beats of your heart and the perfect synchronisation makes you sick.

The Sun Spear, the Great General, the hero raises the spear in the name of Rathir and the men that died before her, you see the fire in her eyes as she stares down the Balor and you think it is over, it is over, it is done, it must be.

An arrow.

Not your arrow, of course, but an arrow nevertheless, an arrow pierces her armor as the spear pierces the sky, and she falls and you are shouting but you are too far away and you cannot hear anything but chaos and panic. The hero, she stands, staggering, shield high as she pushes forward with life seeping through her lips and covering her hands, she breaks the Balor’s beam and the spear flies as she falls and you run, run, forwards, faster, perhaps you can save her, maybe you can change her fate, save her, please, she can’t die now, she -

Your blood is still singing, throat burning and your bones are drumming, still playing, but the song feels wrong and the beat is sharp and snapping and bruising and you can’t breathe anymore, you can’t, because the hero is growing cold beneath your hands and you feel anger and seawater running down your cheeks and this leaves only you left, whatever you are. A misplaced person, wrong place, right time, right place, wrong time. You are not a hero, but someone has to do it. You stand, shaking, straightening as you face the beast with flashing blades gripped too tight in your hands.

This ends here. Her final cry echoes in your mind as you go for the kill. Slash, stab, roll duck weave run, run, the beam is hot and the ground smokes beneath your feet, but you barely notice as you leap, jump, sink your blades as deep as they can go, for Tilera, for Alyn, for Agarth, for Rathir, for Mel Senshir, but never for you, never for you, because you are nothing more than a catalyst to what wouldn’t have been and you are never the outcome, you were never supposed to be the outcome, you are a mistake in the threads of the world, but perhaps - duck, stab, go for the eye, dammit! No time for thinking. No time for thinking. There is only blood and battle and you are only blades and bone and you will kill this beast if it is the last thing you do.

Siege making, siege shaking, siege breaking, you have won, they tell you, you have won and the day is yours, but it feels hollow. You barely hear them shout your name, you barely see them surround you with smiles that should belong to someone else. The captain, with a sigh of relief that hasn’t been let loose since he first picked up his sword. Agarth, surprise in every unpredicted breath he takes and a grin for the untold thousands who will now breathe because the siege is done, Alyn Shir, her eyes smiling and her lips doing the same for once, because even someone like her can enjoy her victories once in a while.

It is all beautiful, but it is all in another world that you won’t touch, because there is an empty spot where the hero must stand, and the only person who should stand there is lying cold and dead on the ramparts under rubble and wreckage, abandoned, forgotten in all but name.

In time someone will write a song about this, a heroic ballad, you think, but if it sings of a hero and it sings of you, you will not listen.


End file.
